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Coral reefs are declining globally, but regional degradation drivers are poorly quantified. This study reveals that coral loss in the northern South China Sea is predominantly linked to human coastal activities, suggesting that tailored local management may effectively reduce reef collapse.

Au nanowires with an unconventional hexagonal close-packed (4H) phase stabilize the 4H-phase high-entropy alloys grown epitaxially on their surface through a facile chemical synthesis. The resulting core–shell nanostructures demonstrate promising overall water electrolysis performance.

Traditional iterative catalysis in RiPP biosynthesis typically modifies linear peptides. Here the authors discover GNAT enzymes that iteratively modify fully folded lasso peptides and engineer them to create lipolasso peptides with expanded chemical diversity.

Here the authors reveal a study of 486,956 Han Chinese individuals showing that most people with genetic variants affecting drug response do not have the predicted adverse events, highlighting the challenges of implementing pharmacogenetics in clinical practice.

Crystallizing the perovskite layer on thin tunnel oxide passivated contact silicon cells is challenging due to rapid heat transfer. Zhou et al. address this issue using a 2-mercaptobenzothiazole additive, achieving a tandem cell efficiency of 32.76%.

The Taiwan Precision Medicine Initiative (TPMI) has built a cohort of more than half a million individuals with Han Chinese ancestry, providing a rich resource of genetic and medical data for this group.

The Taiwan Precision Medicine Initiative recruited and genotyped more than half a million Taiwanese participants, almost all of Han Chinese ancestry, and performed comprehensive genomic analyses and developed polygenic risk score prediction models for numerous health conditions.

Conventional type 1 dendritic cells (cDC1) can boost the precursor exhausted T cell population thought to be essential for efficacy of immune checkpoint therapy. Here the authors enhance this cellular network using Flt3L to expand cDC1s and then map the movement of T cells and DCs between tumors and lymph nodes.

Phase velocity of light can be slowed down when passing through a moving medium. Here the authors demonstrate a light dragging effect enhanced by three orders of magnitude over previous reports by using electromagnetically induced transparency in cold Rubidium atoms and utilize this effect for motion sensors.

Microglia and border-associated macrophages play a role in regulating cerebral blood flow (CBF), but the underlying mechanisms are unclear. Here, the authors show a role for microglial CD39 in the regulation of basal CBF and neurovascular coupling.

The flagship paper of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes Consortium describes the generation of the integrative analyses of 2,658 cancer whole genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types, the structures for international data sharing and standardized analyses, and the main scientific findings from across the consortium studies.

Rare coding variants that reduce the activity of a protein can have a beneficial impact on health. Here, researchers identify rare genetic variants in the CHRNB3 gene that associate with reduced cigarette smoking across diverse populations.

Mu-Ping Hsu and colleagues report a low-temperature Cu-Cu bonding approach using a thin silver layer that resists heat and humidity. The method improves bond stability, enabling reliable stacking for next-generation advanced packaging.

Hydrogen oxidation in alkaline media is limited by slow reaction kinetics. Here, the authors develop a family of bimetallic catalysts by theoretical analysis and reveal that RuIr achieves superior activity and durability through synergistic adsorption of hydrogen and hydroxyl intermediates.

Integrating the Pancharatnam–Berry phase with integrated resonant nanoantennas in a metalens design produces an achromatic device capable of full-colour imaging in the visible range in transmission mode.

Whole-genome sequencing data for 2,778 cancer samples from 2,658 unique donors across 38 cancer types is used to reconstruct the evolutionary history of cancer, revealing that driver mutations can precede diagnosis by several years to decades.

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have improved our understanding of the genetic basis of lung adenocarcinoma but known susceptibility variants explain only a small fraction of the familial risk. Here, the authors perform a two-stage GWAS and report 12 novel genetic loci associated with lung adenocarcinoma in East Asians.

A genome-wide association meta-analysis study of blood lipid levels in roughly 1.6 million individuals demonstrates the gain of power attained when diverse ancestries are included to improve fine-mapping and polygenic score generation, with gains in locus discovery related to sample size.

Authors develop a siRNA delivery system, named Ionizable Polymeric Micelles (IPMs) which employs a FAPi modification, enabling IPMs to target activated hepatic stellate cells, silencing target genes and treating liver fibrosis.

Limited whole genome sequencing (WGS) of Asian populations results in a lack of representative reference panels, hindering imputation of Asian ancestry-specific genetic variants. Here the authors use WGS data from 11,067 individuals across 17 Asian countries to create a new reference panel which shows improved imputation accuracy for South Asian populations.

Water tariff reforms are most effective when price increases build on familiar designs. Staggered and well-communicated reforms can cut household water use by an additional four percentage points.

Activation of neutrophil leukocytes is tightly regulated, and it is important to understand the molecular mechanisms of their response to physiological and pathological stimuli. Here authors show that the adhesion molecule G protein-coupled receptor 97 and its interaction partners play pivotal roles in neutrophil leukocyte activation both in anti-microbial response and in inflammatory diseases.

With the generation of large pan-cancer whole-exome and whole-genome sequencing projects, a question remains about how comparable these datasets are. Here, using The Cancer Genome Atlas samples analysed as part of the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes project, the authors explore the concordance of mutations called by whole exome sequencing and whole genome sequencing techniques.

The authors present SVclone, a computational method for inferring the cancer cell fraction of structural variants from whole-genome sequencing data.

Cancers evolve as they progress under differing selective pressures. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, the authors present the method TrackSig the estimates evolutionary trajectories of somatic mutational processes from single bulk tumour data.

Biobanks of genetic data have been primarily in European populations, which gives us an incomplete understanding of complex traits across populations. Here, the authors initiate the Westlake BioBank for Chinese (WBBC) pilot project with 4,535 whole genome sequences and 5,841 high-density genotypes from China, characterizing large-scale genomic variation in Chinese populations.

The performance of inorganic, wide-bandgap perovskite solar cells is hindered by unsuitable electron transport layers. Han et al. design an acidic magnesium-doped tin oxide quantum dot layer, improving efficiency and stability in single-junction and tandem cells.

Spatially resolved images of M87 obtained at a wavelength of 3.5 mm in 2018 show a ring-like accretion structure, the inner (outer) edge of which connects the black hole (jet).

Natal downs adapted for heat conservation transition to juvenile feathers that support simple flight during bird development. Here the authors characterize gene expression networks and epigenetic changes and use functional perturbations to characterize evolutionarily conserved regulatory switches that control this transition in birds.

Understanding deregulation of biological pathways in cancer can provide insight into disease etiology and potential therapies. Here, as part of the PanCancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) consortium, the authors present pathway and network analysis of 2583 whole cancer genomes from 27 tumour types.

There’s an emerging body of evidence to show how biological sex impacts cancer incidence, treatment and underlying biology. Here, using a large pan-cancer dataset, the authors further highlight how sex differences shape the cancer genome.

Analyses of 2,658 whole genomes across 38 types of cancer identify the contribution of non-coding point mutations and structural variants to driving cancer.

In somatic cells the mechanisms maintaining the chromosome ends are normally inactivated; however, cancer cells can re-activate these pathways to support continuous growth. Here, the authors characterize the telomeric landscapes across tumour types and identify genomic alterations associated with different telomere maintenance mechanisms.

Integrative analyses of transcriptome and whole-genome sequencing data for 1,188 tumours across 27 types of cancer are used to provide a comprehensive catalogue of RNA-level alterations in cancer.

Whole-genome sequencing data from more than 2,500 cancers of 38 tumour types reveal 16 signatures that can be used to classify somatic structural variants, highlighting the diversity of genomic rearrangements in cancer.

Viral pathogen load in cancer genomes is estimated through analysis of sequencing data from 2,656 tumors across 35 cancer types using multiple pathogen-detection pipelines, identifying viruses in 382 genomic and 68 transcriptome datasets.

Analysis of cancer genome sequencing data has enabled the discovery of driver mutations. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium the authors present DriverPower, a software package that identifies coding and non-coding driver mutations within cancer whole genomes via consideration of mutational burden and functional impact evidence.

A pan-cancer genomic analysis reports the effects of structural variations on chromatin domains (TADs). Most TAD disruptions do not result in appreciable changes in expression of nearby genes.

An analysis of 2,954 genomes from 38 cancer subtypes identified 19,166 retrotransposition events in 35% of samples. Aberrant LINE-1 retrotranspositions can lead to the deletion of tumor-suppressor genes as well as the amplification of oncogenes.

Some cancer patients first present with metastases where the location of the primary is unidentified; these are difficult to treat. In this study, using machine learning, the authors develop a method to determine the tissue of origin of a cancer based on whole sequencing data.

Many tumours exhibit hypoxia (low oxygen) and hypoxic tumours often respond poorly to therapy. Here, the authors quantify hypoxia in 1188 tumours from 27 cancer types, showing elevated hypoxia links to increased mutational load, directing evolutionary trajectories.

Multi-omics datasets pose major challenges to data interpretation and hypothesis generation owing to their high-dimensional molecular profiles. Here, the authors develop ActivePathways method, which uses data fusion techniques for integrative pathway analysis of multi-omics data and candidate gene discovery.

The characterization of 4,645 whole-genome and 19,184 exome sequences, covering most types of cancer, identifies 81 single-base substitution, doublet-base substitution and small-insertion-and-deletion mutational signatures, providing a systematic overview of the mutational processes that contribute to cancer development.

In this study the authors consider the structural variants (SVs) present within cancer cases of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium. They report hundreds of genes, including known cancer-associated genes for which the nearby presence of a SV breakpoint is associated with altered expression.

The growth of wafer-scale single-crystalline 2D semiconductors on sapphire is important for their electronic applications, but the underlying mechanisms are not yet fully understood. Here, the authors study the influence of air-induced sapphire surface hydrolysis on the growth process of 2D WS₂ and propose an ultraviolet light healing method to repair the degraded substrates.